[parted-devel] bug#79752: Feature suggestion: detect partition tables with sector-size mismatch

[Pascal Hambourg]

On 23/03/2026, Brian C. Lane wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 01, 2025 at 10:06:09PM +0100, Samuel Plavec wrote:
>> 
>> I would like to suggest a new feature. In the case parted couldn't
>> recognize the partition table on a disk, I think it would be helpful
>> if parted attempted to check whether the partition table didn't assume
>> a sector size different from the sector size that the disk currently
>> uses.
>> 
>> The context is that I recently ran into an issue when I accidentally
>> partitioned a disk with a logical sector size of 4096 bytes, and then
>> tried to read it with a logical sector size of 512 bytes. (This was
>> because of a USB--SATA adapter acting strangely. Physical sector size
>> of the disk is 4096 bytes.) When I tried diagnosing this issue using
>> parted, it didn't recognize the partition table, which created a false
>> impression that the data could have become corrupted.
>> 
>> (This issue is not particularly uncommon; when I finally learned what
>> was its cause, I could find several posts online describing exactly
>> the same problem.)
> 
> Thanks, I'm not sure how we would be able to detect this.

Probe the device with different sector_size values ?

> But this kind of discussion belongs on the parted-devel mailing list,
> not the bug tracker.

Forwarded.